Spark: Modular, Composable Shaders for Graphics Hardware

In creating complex real-time shaders, programmers should be able to decompose code into independent, localized modules of their choosing. Current real-time shading languages, however, enforce a fixed decomposition into per-pipeline-stage procedures. Program concerns at other scales - including those that cross-cut multiple pipeline stages - cannot be expressed as reusable modules.

We present a shading language, Spark, and its implementation for modern graphics hardware that improves support for separation of concerns into modules. A Spark shader class can encapsulate code that maps to more than one pipeline stage, and can be extended and composed using object-oriented inheritance. In our tests, shaders written in Spark achieve performance within 2% of HLSL.

*This software is subject to the U.S. Export Administration Regulations and other U.S. law, and may not be exported or re-exported to certain countries (Burma, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria) or to persons or entities prohibited from receiving U.S. exports (including Denied Parties, Specially Designated Nationals, and entities on the Bureau of Export Administration Entity List or involved with missile technology or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons).

Using this translation widget will provide you with a machine translation of the original content. The machine translation is provided for informational purposes only; it should not be relied upon as complete or accurate.